Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes Sunday through Thursday with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

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1.5.12

LSU System must hire with changed environment in mind

It’s a wonder my former uber-boss,
ex-Louisiana State University System President John Lombardi, lasted as long as
he did, both in his job and in good health, as no doubt his case of athlete’s
mouth from sticking his foot in it so many times was severe. But it’s good
riddance because, in the final analysis, he did not have the best interests of
higher education of Louisiana in mind – not the kind of person needed going
forward.

On some issues, Lombardi was on target. Early in his reign, he sent around
to the campuses a reprint of a column exhorting the increase of standards in instruction,
definitely swimming against the currents in higher education as indicated by grade
inflation and with a general weariness by faculty members to hold the line on
quality when so many pressures, some external to them, some internal and part
of the faculty culture, exist to let things slide.

He also correctly noted the intuitively obvious that students, who by
far are the biggest beneficiaries of their educations, ought to pay more of
that and relieve taxpayers of that burden to some degree (Louisiana
still is well below the national average in average tuition and fees charged,
despite having one of the higher per capita
costs of higher education). The inherent redistributionist mentality only
slowly disappearing from the consciousness of the state’s political culture
that lies behind the low tuition concept fundamentally is at odds with
increasing student achievement, because students who invest more of their own
resources into education are more likely to work harder at it, and this
discourages marginal students whose lack of ability or work ethic for it from
wasting taxpayer dollars.

But at the same time, Lombardi, like much of academia, fell far too
easily into accepting the flawed premise of wealth redistribution. Thus, he
argued that the Taylor Opportunity Program for Scholars, which pays for tuition
for students that meet extremely minimal standards of achievement, rather that
have its standards increased resulting in reduced state expenditures, should
become need-based in order to save money. (His crass
remark then about seeing luxury cars parked in student lots at Louisiana
State University Baton Rouge I knew then would come back to haunt him.) In
other words, he argued that students by accident of birth whose families came
into money by the time they were of college age should be discriminated against
for no reason compared to other similarly-qualified students – if the program is
supposed to reward scholarship and ability, where’s the logic or justice in
applying extraneous and artificial standards to it?

Yet we can understand why he proclaimed such preferences as these when
we understand, as evidenced through these words and subsequent deeds, where his
fidelity lay. It was not in what was best for higher education, defined as
policies that would improve the quality and efficiency of its delivery in
Louisiana, because he so often took contrary approaches to that, as in his
views on TOPS, or in his resistance to fundamental reforms recommended
regarding the state’s overbuilt, maldistributed, and confused delivery system
for higher education. That’s because he did, first and foremost, what was in
the best interests of the LSU System.

Just so. After all, he was employed by its Board of Supervisors. His job
was to ensure that the system got as many resources as possible with the most
autonomy as possible – goals that often contradict the larger purpose of
serving taxpayers and the citizenry. This is not deviant; it is entirely the
norm for government as a whole and any particular agency in it. The nature of
bureaucracy produces this behavior, and only elected officials can, if they
have the will, check these tendencies and steer them more towards serving the
public. Simply, every agency, left to its own devices, will act in its own best
interests that may or may not comport to the genuine public interest.

Which makes ironic that the apparent straw that broke the camel’s back as
to his employment was reacting to just such an attempt to push higher education
along a path of improved efficiency and performance. Only a couple
of days before his canning, Lombardi was defending publicly, and
pugnaciously, the current duplicative system of higher education governance
that empowers the system and its Board to the detriment of the goal of
efficient, effective higher education delivery. That as well he got his lunch
handed to him in argumentation by a representative of the Board of Regents only
heaped onto his recent sins as seen by the Supervisors – “losing” the
University of New Orleans to the University of Louisiana System last year, on
the brink of “losing” my employer (for whom I don’t speak on this matter and
whose leaders probably wish I weren’t writing anything at all about this) Louisiana
State University Shreveport to merging with Louisiana Tech University (and his
departure at this critical juncture means the Board thinks his presence was
endangering the chances of blocking the merger), and continued cuts forced upon
the system.

It seems that after that dismal performance, he had to be let go.
Understand that it wasn’t because he was outspoken, in speaking inconvenient
truths that would improve the public weal. Bluntness in discourse from political
appointees benefits the public weal only when there’s actual truth there, which
was not so in his case. Rather, he was a messenger trying to defend entrenched
interests reluctant to change for the good of the state, and it was determined
he no longer was an effective messenger by representatives of them.

Or, perhaps, the representatives increasingly do not bring these
establishment attitudes with them onto Board service as newer members are appointed
by former UL System president and current Gov. Bobby
Jindal, or continuing members are changing them as the winds continue to
blow in increasingly different direction from the past. In any event, Lombardi
had to go as an obstacle to beneficial change and/or because he couldn’t effectively
articulate and implement Board interests, which also may be evolving more to
the presumed “One
LSU” concept.

And this means the next system president should be one that will accede
to working in a job less grandiose and powerful, just as the state should move
power away from the system to the Regents, and in one committed to
rationalizing the current state of higher education delivery in the state. That
is, if the job even exists, courtesy of the idea to make LSUBR and the system
one and the same, if policy-makers buy that. But it would be a mistake to bring
in somebody that will so easily graft onto to the establishment as it currently
is at the expense of the public interest, as did Lombardi.